And I Will Try to Fix You
by Diary
Summary: In a world where hearts work somewhat differently than ours, this is the story of Neville and Luna. Complete. Edited slightly.


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Author's Notes: I read a fic where people could literally exchange hearts, and that gave me this idea.

...

Neville's seen Luna Lovegood sitting with Ginny a few times, but he's always avoided her.

She's strange-looking, and he's heard whispers of her, of the mental Ravenclaw who dances by herself in the middle of the stairs and tells people random facts about weird creatures with unpronounceable names.

When he ends up sharing a compartment with her and the others, his opinion shifts somewhat when he sees her heart displayed on her sleeve. It's not uncommon for girls her age to do so, but hers is ugly to look at. It's cracked all over, an almost blue-black colour, and it's swollen.

He tries not to stare and finds himself thinking, _brave, that girl is brave, Harry could use her as an ally, I wonder what kind of flowers she likes_.

His own heart is firmly hidden. It almost completely broke in two when he was a tot, and it hasn't healed well at all. His is a dark red-green colour, and like hers, it's heavily swollen. He doesn't even let his gran stay in the room when the family healer looks at it as part of her examination. He's never let his schoolmates or housemates see it.

And Neville isn't above bribery or begging for things; he never has been. Harry needs all the help he can get, and Neville will do anything to help him get that help. If it means giving this girl rare, expensive flowers that she probably won't take care of properly or going into the forbidden forest because a certain plant will make her weird little creatures happy, he will.

…

That night, he finds himself thinking of hearts.

Harry's is hidden, now, but during his first four years, it wasn't. He kept it on his chest, often covered by his robes, but when he wore muggle clothes, it was visible. It has a persistent lightening shaped crack, dozens of little scars, and a small, persistently black spot near the bottom. At the start of the term, it's always a pale, pink-gray colour, but it got brighter, bigger, and redder as the year went on, making the cracks and black spot almost unnoticeable, only to start rapidly losing colour and shrinking when the last week of the term came.

When Cedric Diggory was killed, before Harry thought to hide it, it had developed a hole in it.

Ginny keeps hers beneath her robes, like Harry used to do. Hers is bright red, a small hole in the middle, smaller than it used to be but still there and a few tiny cracks. Meanwhile, Ron tries to keep his heart hidden, but he has a habit of angrily pinning it to his right sleeve whenever it gets itchy; his is also bright red, a little small, and across it are three deep, straight lines, pink scars, noticeable.

Hermione likes to carry hers in her book-bag, but Ron often gets annoyed and digs it out, ignoring the way pulses in his hands, pinning it on her left upper pocket. Neville reckons Ron likes looking at it; it's a pale pink, full of tiny cracks and two large, vertical scars, identical in length. When she's engrossed in a book or feeling something passionately, it'll turn almost white.

Seamus and Dean haven't traded hearts; they're too young, and that kind of magic is specifically designed to be very hard for people to do on their own, and no one powerful enough to do it for them would be stupid enough to do it for two little boys. So, they haven't traded hearts, but Dean does have a habit of pinning his heart on Shay's chest during lessons, although, Neville doesn't know why, and Shay insists that Dean has to lock Seamus's heart into Dean's art kit before they go to sleep at night.

Even now, with Seamus, heart unbroken and big and bright red, not believing Harry, Dean still gently took off his heart and locked it away before they went to bed. Dean's heart has two large scars, but when it's pinned to Seamus, it's so full and big that a person has to look hard to see them.

He thinks about how Luna Lovegood looks like she could be a part of the Malfoy family. Malfoy has always guarded his heart, but Neville reckons that it's a normal shade of red, a few deep scars, a few tiny cracks, nothing like Harry and Ginny's.

…

In DA, she literally knocks his heart out, and he scrambles to grab it and hide it before anyone sees.

On the floor, out of breath, he glares at her as people surround him.

Of course, he doesn't think she did it on purpose, she's one of the least passive-aggressive people he knows, and even if she wasn't, he knows he hasn't done anything wrong. They were just practising, partnered by Harry, and it turns out, in addition to being brave, she's a powerful little witch.

He imagines her in a duel against Bellatrix Lestrange, who's bloody escaped, her almost black heart devoid of scars and holes on the front page of the Daily Prophet. He imagines cackling Lestrange against loud-laughing Lovegood, both able to function despite not being quite right in the head, and he imagines Luna knocking Lestrange's heart out, skipping over, and carelessly smashing it under her bare feet. His frown disappears, a small smile replacing it as he stands up on his own, bowing to her.

…

When he's in the hospital wing after the battle at the ministry, his heart healing in a jar from where Lestrange had managed to find it and _bite_ it, sharp and hard, leaving another permanent mark, she often comes in to talk to him and Hermione, bearing gifts. Books and pretty quills for Hermione, sometimes with odd-coloured inks and papers with designs on them. For him, she brings some of his favourite plants, simply smiling vaguely at Madam Pomfrey's disapproval, as well as information about how different plants are doing in the greenhouses.

Ron comes in for his daily treatments, not so bad he has to stay like they do, and he often curls up in the cot next to Hermione's, both their hearts glowing in each other's presence, and it's so obvious Neville just wants to smack both of them. He wants to say, _hey, idiots, Cedric Diggory is dead, Bellatrix Lestrange is running free and loose, and I know I'm going to die in the next few years; so, d'ya think think you could please stop annoying everyone with refusing to see the truth _and _seriously, you two are so stupid, even though I love you both, you are, I still remember the stomachaches you two caused me during third year and for merlin's sake, once you go into a forest full of spiders, break numerous rules, and just generally do completely mad things for the other one, I think the gig's up_.

Luna has a habit of looking at him with her usual dazed expression when that happens, and he finds himself fidgeting, wishing his heart was back underneath his skin, safe and unseen.

…

Apparently, when someone has a habit of sleepwalking, the professors do something to the dorm, and the dorm keeps them from leaving while asleep.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times and different ways Neville tries to tell the room not to let Luna sleepwalk out, it never works. Her sleeping mind is enough to get it to override him.

When Ginny and Padma start talking about tying Luna up or putting her in a body-bind, she doesn't react, and he remembers the awe he felt when he first saw her heart, desperately wanting the brave girl for an ally.

He tells the room to wake him up when she starts to leave, and it does.

So, he grabs her hand, puts her in his bed, and slings an arm across her stomach. Once, his hand accidentally brushes across her heart, and she makes a noise in her sleep while he feels his own heart jump painfully.

It takes him a few days to get a proper night's sleep after that.

He has touched another heart before. He remembers a woman dropping hers in Diagon Alley once, and him picking it up, carefully dusting it off, and handing it to her; he was about five or six, then. Before that, his mum would give him hers to play with, something he's not sure if he has any real memory of or not. Gran's told him that he once buried it in the garden, and she and his dad spent half a day trying to find it, unaware he'd been anywhere near the garden in the first place.

To him, touching a heart is serious. It isn't to be done, not by him, not to him.

Luna's always scared him; she always will.

As happy as he is to have her as an ally, if it weren't for that, he'd try to avoid her. She's very nice to him, but sometimes, she does things that remind him of his parents, or worse, Lestrange. Sometimes, she still reminds him of Malfoy.

Her mum's dead, and until Ginny noticed her, no one really showed her kindness. _Loony_ does hurt her, and so does having her stuff nicked.

Neville understands, he does, that she's human. She's someone admirable, someone more than her bravery, powerful spells, and earnest explanations of bizarre things.

He understands, but it doesn't change things.

…

Covered in snake blood, he finds her, bleeding and dazed, her heart literally cut in two.

He puts it in his jumper, wrapping the cloth around it, and whispers reassuring words until someone notices them.

Padma carefully puts the heart back together, first with tiny stitches, and then, with a spell over them. Ginny holds Luna's hand as Padma does so, and Ron tries to argue for getting a healer or, at least, Madam Pomfrey, pointing out that this isn't something an eighteen-year-old girl should be doing, that Luna needs potions.

And Neville reckons he might be right, because Luna is shivering and crying, muttering things no one can decipher.

Still, all the healers and Madam Pomfrey are running to and fro, and so, they do what they've been doing, helping and protecting one another, never mind if they have to do things they're too young and inexperienced to do.

When Luna came back from being Malfoy's captive, her heart was small and stretched thin, tiny holes and large scars, a few black spots. Still, she wore it on her sleeve.

"Here," Padma says, putting the heart into his hands before he can protest. It twitches, and Luna lets out a half-gasp, half-moan.

Carefully, he slips it under her shirt, and they watch the outline, finding the right place and sinking until there's no more movement.

…

Then, Seamus accidentally falls on top of Luna.

Before Dean left, he put his heart in Seamus's favourite jumper pocket. The problem was, he didn't take Seamus's in exchange, and it doesn't have to be a person's own heart, but everyone needs to have a heart with them or they soon end up little more than zombies. Even muggles who only understand a little bit about the magic behind hearts understand that.

When Seamus found the heart, he'd had a full-blown mental break, and they'd had to put him in a body-bind until Padma managed to convince him that she knew for sure Dean was still alive. She put it in an unbreakable jewellery box, and Seamus became obsessed, always trying to protect both the box and the heart, having mini-episodes whenever a new crack or scar appeared.

So, Seamus was trying to kill Dean, which, fair enough, in Neville's opinion, and someone deflected the spell, causing Seamus to fall backwards, landing right on top of Luna's chest.

He watches in horror as the heart falls out, the stitches coming undone, and Luna lets out a bloodcurling scream, one that reminds him of banshees.

Finally, they don't have to worry about getting someone qualified, as several healers immediately appear, assessing the damage, loading Luna on a floating cot as they carefully gather her heart into a special containment bubble, it floating a few inches above her chest.

…

He comes to the hospital and sits down next to Luna, bringing old issues of The Quibbler and her drawing supplies.

She tells him the healers are worried, though they try not to let her hear.

Neville, looking at the heart in it's floating bubble, can see why. It's refusing to heal so that the stitches can dissolve, and it's smaller than ever, almost flat, the veins showing sharply against it.

Old Xeno is still in Azkaban, though, Neville goes every day with Harry and the others to try to get the ministry to stop messing around and just release him. One day, he gets angry and starts lecturing the bored-sounding official about all that Luna's done, how necessary an ally she is, and explaining in detail how desperately she needs her father, threatening to bring back a picture showing she just how bad her heart really is.

When he comes back, he notices her heart looks a bit fuller, and he hopes that's a sign the bored-sounding official, who'd been gaping by the time he was done with his rant, will do something soon.

…

After Xenophilius is released, Luna's heart gets better, the stitches disappearing, it swelling back up, and eventually, she's released.

She and her dad end up renting a small cottage near a huge forest and a large garden.

Neville sort of invites himself over, not wanting Luna to over-strain herself with garden work and frankly, just not trusting Old Xeno to not do something like set the garden on fire or fill the forest with deadly, hard-to-remove weeds. Not on purpose, just because he doesn't bother to learn about plants and gardening, instead preferring to assign his own thoughts on what things should be called and how they should work.

His gran has a fit, and when he stops to think about, he's aware that going over to someone's house and kicking them out of their own garden isn't a decent or legal thing to do, but seeing as how Luna always brings him pumpkin juice and sandwiches and her father often gives him little trinkets in thanks, he reckons they either don't realise this or simply don't care, happy to let him do so.

Eventually, when he realises Luna isn't going to touch things without permission or pick things that aren't ready to be picked, he lets her sit in the shady part of the garden while he works. Her heart seems better than ever; it still has the scars, cracks, black spots, and holes, but it's mostly normal-sized and a nice shade of red.

They talk, argue, and sometimes just silently sit together, things peaceful instead of uncomfortable.

He supposes it isn't a surprise when he first sees her in her simple blue tunic, barefoot, and skipping through the woods, heart resting on her right wrist, straggly hair flying as free as it can in her messy ponytail, and thinks _merlin, she's pretty, when did that happen_ and _I probably should have noticed that a few years ago_.

It doesn't change anything. All the fears he's ever had of talking to pretty girls have disappeared after his seventh year. She's still just Luna, the brave girl, powerful witch, going to be a woman soon, if she isn't one already. Sixteen, but she's already done and had done to her more than a enough, so that, like him, she'll never be able to slip back into childhood. Even the simple things will always be somewhat tinted by the knowledge of how good and bad the world can truly be.

…

She goes back to Hogwarts, and he worries about her heart, telling her not to listen to anyone who takes the mickey, giving her a flower necklace he made, and telling her to be sure to smuggle him samples from the greenhouse, because now that Sprout's retired, he's not so sure he can trust this new Herbology bloke, who's only thirty and apparently only made As on Herbology during his Hogwarts days.

They write, and when he sees her on holidays, her heart has a few more cracks and is swollen slightly but doesn't look to be in danger of breaking again.

…

One day, she's trying to do handstands on the ceiling with her sticky trainers, and her heart falls to the floor.

He hurries to scoop it up, relieved when he sees there's no damage. Absently, he dusts it off, and that's when Luna falls off the ceiling.

Thankfully, she manages to fall on the couch.

…

Something sort of clicks in his mind, and he finds himself staring at the heart in his hands. It's pulsing slightly, cool against his palms.

"Here," he says, reluctantly, holding it out.

"You can hold it," she tells him, softly.

He does, tracing his fingers across it, and vaguely, he's aware her breathing has changed, but he's too busy watching in amazement as some of the tiny cracks disappear completely. "Er, Luna-"

"It's okay, you can go on," is her only response.

Continuing, keeping his touch gentle, he strokes, focusing on all the cracks he can find. Some of them take time, and he sits down in a nearby rocker, not relenting until they disappear. As he focuses on them, it returns to normal size, becoming a bright red, beating even harder but steadier. Cracks, given enough time or just the right amount of attention, can quickly heal; Seamus's heart was often devoid of cracks because whenever he got one, Dean would sling his arms around Shay's shoulders or give him some sweets, and soon enough, the crack would be gone.

Scars and black spots and holes are different, though. It's rare for a scar to ever completely disappear, for black spots to turn back to the normal colour, and holes may get smaller, but they never completely close.

When all the cracks are gone, he feels close to exhausted and finds the smallest scar, leaning down to kiss it. Luna draws in a sharp breath, followed by a soft moan, and he looks tiredly as the scar becomes thinner and smaller.

"Here," he says, handing it back.

Pinning it back on her wrist, she gives him a bright-eyed look. "Thank you, Neville."

…

Beyond him making sure it's alright and her assuring him it is, they don't talk about it. Just, whenever they have time alone, she'll hand him her heart, and he'll stroke it until they're both tired.

…

When she asks to see his, he only hesitates after he's said yes.

She doesn't say anything as he hesitates, and finally, after years of never taking it out of his chest aside from brief hospital visits, he does.

He's surprised as he holds it in his hands. It's not near as swollen as before, and most of the cracks have disappeared. It's more red than green, and it's still all crookedly put together, but he thinks it might be just a tad bit straighter than before. Of course, there's still the scars and the mark from Bellatrix Lestrange.

When he hands it to her, he feels a jolt in his brain and a shiver go down his spine.

"Here," she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him on the couch while she takes the rocker.

Luna hums while she examines it, her touch gentle, and he feels nerves in his back reacting, making him a bit worried he's going to involuntarily jerk his leg like dogs do when they're scratched in the right place. Lying down, he vaguely sees spots beneath his eyes, and he realises, half-guilty and half-amazed, that this is the feeling he always expected the few times he tried wanking but that never came. His breathing is funny, but he keeps telling himself he's okay, no one is going to hurt him, especially not Luna, who somehow has become his best mate.

"Are you okay, Neville?"

"Yeah," he says, dizzily. "Please, keep going."

When they're both exhausted, she sits on his stomach as she puts his heart, now crack-free, almost back to normal size, completely red, back in his chest, and he reaches up, stroking her cheek and tangling his fingers through a strand of her hair. In return, she leans down, and then, they're kissing, and briefly, he feels a warm beating in his heart, and then, it's steady.

"I feel it, too," she whispers, barely breaking away.

They're both crying and kissing, and they don't stop until a knock at the door makes both of their newly-healed, still somewhat damaged hearts jump.


End file.
